Thomas Godfrey (Ed) Read Online Free

these
quintessential private eyes, we have the tribulations of — hang on to your
trenchcoats — Kaiser Lupowitz as he encounters ‘Mr. Big.’
     

    I was sitting in my office, cleaning
the debris out of my thirty-eight and wondering where my next case was coming
from. I like being a private eye, and even though once in a while I’ve had my
gums massaged with an automobile jack, the sweet smell of greenbacks makes it
all worth it. Not to mention the dames, which are a minor preoccupation of mine
that I rank just ahead of breathing. That’s why, when the door to my office
swung open and a long-haired blonde named Heather Butkiss came striding in and
told me she was a nudie model and needed my help, my salivary glands shifted
into third. She wore a short skirt and a tight sweater and her figure described
a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak.
    “What can I do for you, sugar?”
    “I want you to find someone for me.”
    “Missing person? Have you tried the
police?”
    “Not exactly, Mr. Lupowitz.”
    “Call me Kaiser, sugar. All right,
so what’s the scam?”
    “God.”
    “God?”
    “That’s right, God. The Creator, the
Underlying Principle, the First Cause of Things, the All Encompassing. I want
you to find Him for me.”
    I’ve had some fruit cakes up in the
office before, but when they’re built like she was, you listened.
    “Why?”
    “That’s my business, Kaiser. You
just find Him.”
    “I’m sorry, sugar. You got the wrong
boy.”
    “But why?”
    “Unless I know all the facts,” I
said, rising.
    “O.K., O.K.,” she said, biting her lower
lip. She straightened the seam of her stocking, which was strictly for my
benefit, but I wasn’t buying any at the moment.
    “Let’s have it on the line, sugar.”
    “Well, the truth is—I’m not really a
nudie model.”
    “No?”
    “No. My name is not Heather Butkiss,
either. It’s Claire Rosensweig and I’m a student at Vassar. Philosophy major.
History of Western Thought and all that. I have a paper due January. On Western
religion. All the other kids in the course will hand in speculative papers. But
I want to know. Professor Grebanier said if anyone finds out for sure, they’re a cinch to pass
the course. And my dad’s promised me a Mercedes if I get straight A’s.”
    I opened a deck of Luckies and a
pack of gum and had one of each. Her story was beginning to interest me.
Spoiled coed. High IQ and a body I wanted to know better.
    “What does God look like?”
    “I’ve never seen him.”
    “Well, how do you know He exists?”
    “That’s for you to find out.”
    “Oh, great. Then you don’t know what
he looks like? Or where to begin looking?”
    “No. Not really. Although I suspect
he’s everywhere. In the air, in every flower, in you and I—and in this chair.”
    “Uh huh.” So she was a pantheist. I
made a mental note of it and said I’d give her case a try—for a hundred bucks a
day, expenses, and a dinner date. She smiled and okayed the deal. We rode down
in the elevator together. Outside it was getting dark. Maybe God did exist and
maybe He didn’t, but somewhere in that city there were sure a lot of guys who
were going to try and keep me from finding out.
    My first lead was Rabbi Itzhak
Wiseman, a local cleric who owed me a favor for finding out who was rubbing
pork on his hat. I knew something was wrong when I spoke to him because he was
scared. Real scared.
    “Of course there’s a you-know-what,
but I’m not even allowed to say His name or He’ll strike me dead, which I could
never understand why someone is so touchy about having his name said.”
    “You ever see Him?”
    “Me? Are you kidding? I’m lucky I
get to see my grandchildren.”
    “Then how do you know He exists?”
    “How do I know? What kind of
question is that? Could I get a suit like this for fourteen dollars if there
was no one up there? Here, feel a gabardine—how can you doubt?”
    “You got nothing more to go